They COULD go out and spend on the best facilities in the country, but I think it would take 10 years or more for fans to show up and for recruits to choose to go there over Texas or Texas A&M.

I mentioned this before, but I went to grad school at Emory, and they were vocal in their choosing not to get into bigtime athletics. It was actually a condition of their accepting millions of dollars worth of their Coke money. But anyhow, Emory had really nice DIII facilities and won numerous nattys at that level each year. But, it would take 10 years to EVER create a culture in which school spirit/athletics mattered.

Easiest thing would be for such schools to throw $5million/yr at a phenomenal bball coach and build a premo arena. They could probably convince a dozen top bball players to spend a year there. But, football program building is tough business and it takes decades to build fan support.

Oregon and Tennessee already had some great fans before building their facilities. Oregon benefits from the Nike U connection too.